Lithium-ion rechargeable battery cells currently use a graphite-based anode. It is well known that silicon can be used instead of graphite as the active anode material (see, for example, Insertion Electrode Materials for Rechargeable Lithium Batteries, M. Winter, J. O. Besenhard, M. E. Spahr, and P. Novak in Adv. Mater. 1998, 10, No. 10) and it has been proposed that the silicon anode material may be in the form of pillars (or fibres) of silicon.
A method of making such silicon pillars is described in Peng K-Q, Yan, Y-J, Gao S-P, and Zhu J., Adv. Materials, 14 (2002), 1164-1167, Adv. Functional Materials, (2003), 13, No 2 February, 127-132 and Adv. Materials, 16 (2004), 73-76. Peng, et al. have shown a way to make nano pillars on silicon by a chemical method. According to this method, a silicon wafer, which may be n- or p-type and has the {111} face exposed to solution, is etched at 50° C. using the following solution: 5M HF and 20 mM AgNO3. The mechanism postulated in these papers is that isolated nanoclusters of silver are electrolessly deposited on the silicon surface in an initial stage (nucleation). In a second (etching) stage, the silver nanoclusters and the areas of silicon surrounding them act as local electrodes that cause the electrolytic oxidation of the silicon in the areas surrounding the silver nanoclusters to form SiF6 cations, which diffuse away from the etching site to leave the silicon underlying the silver nanocluster in the form pillars.
K. Peng et al., Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 44 (2005), 2737-2742; and K. Peng et al., Adv. Funct. Mater., 16 (2006), 387-394, relate to a method of etching a silicon wafer that is similar to that described in the earlier papers by Peng et al but the nucleation/silver nanoparticle deposition step and the etching step are performed in different solutions. In a first (nucleation) step, a silicon chip is placed in a solution of 4.6M HF and 0.01M AgNO3 for 1 minute. A second (etching) step is then performed in a different solution, namely 4.6M HF and 0.135M Fe(NO3)3 for 30 or 50 minutes. Both steps are carried out at 50° C. In these papers, a different mechanism is proposed for the etching step as compared to the earlier papers, namely that silicon underlying the silver (Ag) nanoparticles are removed and the nanoparticles gradually sink into the bulk silicon, leaving columns of silicon in the areas that are not directly underlying the silver nanoparticles.
In order to increase the uniformity and density of the pillars grown on silicon wafers and the speed of growth, it has been proposed in WO2007/083152 to conduct the process in the presence of an alcohol.
WO2009/010758 discloses the etching of silicon powder instead of wafers, in order to make silicon material for use in lithium ion batteries. The resulting pillar particles, an example of which is shown in FIG. 2, contain pillars on their surface and the whole of the resulting particles can be used in the anode material of the batteries; alternatively, the pillars can be severed from the particles to form silicon fibres and only the silicon fibres are used to make the anode. The etching method used is the same as that disclosed in WO2007/083152.